This quote is taken from the last U.S. Senate prayer Peter Marshall wrote as chaplain before he died at age 46 in January 1949:
“Deliver us, our Father, from futile hopes and from clinging to lost causes, that we may move into ever-growing calm and ever-widening horizons. Where we cannot convince, let us be willing to persuade, for small deeds done are better than great deeds planned. We know that we cannot do everything. But help us to do something. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.”
Reading Mr. Jones, Meet the Master, a book of sermons and prayers, triggered a significant change to my life. A friend encouraged me to buy a paperback we saw at a yard sale, I read it, and, through Peter Marshall’s words, I met a Jesus that no one had been telling me about. In these sermons, Jesus seemed so personal — someone I could really know — and I wondered why he was not being presented to me in that way.
God also used Marshall’s sermons to show my lack of Bible doctrine, even though I had been attending a church regularly for almost two years. I questioned and eventually left that church, and God led me to one that did not stray from the Gospel and the Bible’s truths.
Years later, during one of our church library giveaways, I found this 1953 hardcover edition to add to my collection of treasures.
Darla McDavid 